Voices of Resistance and Hope

The rallies that gripped Ukraine in the winter
of 2013-2014, also known as the Euromaidan or the Revolution of Dignity, became
one of the most massive protest movements in the history of independent
Ukraine. Those events united people of diverse social, ethnic, regional, and political
backgrounds and will remain a hot topic of public and academic discussions for
a long time.

"Voices of
Resistance and Hope: Kyiv-Lviv-Kharkiv" was an endeavor to document the
experiences, attitudes, motivations, and expectations of Euromaidan
participants. When starting this project, we wanted to hear and preserve for
further understanding the voices of participants and activists of the Ukrainian
protests through their individual perspectives and experiences. Personal
stories, emotions, and moods of the creators of the events which tomorrow will
become memories allow us to look at the Euromaidan from the microperspective of
experiencing the historic moment. To this end, we chose the method of in-depth
‘here-and-now’ interviews with the participants and activists. The
conversations were held on the maidans of Kyiv, Lviv, and Kharkiv in December 2013
and February 2014. Since the protest movement also had considerable resonance
abroad, several interviews were conducted with Euromaidan participants in
Poland (Warsaw, Lublin).

The sample of “Voices of Resistance and Hope” is not representative. Nevertheless we did our best to
reflect the specific features of the protest movement in each city and talk to people
of various ages, sexes, and affiliations. The questions we asked were about
their experience and forms of participation in the Euromaidan and similar
protests, their motivations and feelings, the importance of different sites,
their assessment of the slogans used, reflections on European integration and
European values, and hopes for the future. Later, in connection with the
further exacerbation of the sociopolitical situation in Ukraine, we updated the
questionnaire for the ‘second wave’ of the survey. The methodology remained the
same, but we added some questions concerning potential changes in the
protesters’ attitude to the state and society under the influence of the Maidan
events, various groups of protesters, heroes and anti-heroes of the Maidan and
Ukraine, and historical analogies. In Kyiv we also used the method of
projective drawings which help analyze the symbolic and cognitive perception of
the spaces covered by the protests.